The present invention relates generally to electrical transformers, and more specifically, relates to a process and apparatus for continuous winding of a magnetic core strip in and around bobbins of pre-wound coils.
As is known, in the electronic industry, electrical transformers, e.g., current transformers, are often used in wide array of applications, including the use of electrical transformers with printed circuit boards and with circuit interruption devices. The electrical transformers are capable of providing power to the circuit board as well as sensing current in the primary circuit of the circuit board. In order for the electrical transformer to provide adequate power to the circuit board, the transformer has a high magnetic permeability core and the coil of the transformer has a high number of wire turns to provide the required voltage. One of the more common prior art transformers is a toroidally wound transformer. An associated disadvantage of the toroidally wound transformer is that the process of manufacturing and winding is very time consuming and also costly.
In the recent years, the related electronic industry has begun to wind coils about continuous lamination cores or closed magnetic cores of smaller transformers. Currently, most electrical transformer manufacturing processes require the utilization of laminated magnetic materials to produce a core arrangement required for the application. The laminated core process has become an industry standard for electrical transformers used in circuit interruption devices, e.g., breakers, relays, etc; however, this process is intrinsically complicated, labor intensive, and prone to failures.
Accordingly, all of the above-mentioned transformer winding processes are labor intensive processes and costly. Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a less labor-intensive generally automated process of producing electrical transformers.